What do you think?
Rate this book
Erato
Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize
Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Named after the Greek muse of lyric poetry, Erato combines documentary-style prose narratives with the passionate lyric poetry for which Rees-Jones is renowned. Here as she experiments with form, particularly the sonnet, Rees-Jones questions the value of the poet and poetry itself. What is the difference, asks one poem, between a sigh and a song? Erato's themes are manifold but focus especially on personal loss, desire and recovery, in the context of a world in which wars and displacement of people has become a terrifying norm.
In its narrative of transformations, the invocation of Erato also carries with it a sense of errata and erasure. As stories and ideas are repeated, and recurring imagery – of fires, bees, birds – is continually reframed, we are asked to replay, rethink, rename. How do we step out from the 'perpetual loop' of trauma? And how do we process painful change? Bewilderment by ongoing historical tragedy is countered by the Rees-Jones's close attention to immediate or remembered experience, and the importance of the body, whether lying awake with a sleepless child, felling a backyard tree, walking the encampments of refugees in Paris, or the dreamlike conversation she has with the radio about bombs and drones.
Erato includes elegies for family members and close friends, including an impressive and moving long poem 'I.M.', and the autobiographical 'Caprice' in which Rees-Jones explores with musical abandon 'the scribble-mess' of self, and the 'grainy, atomized emotion coursing through in middle age'.
Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Named after the Greek muse of lyric poetry, Erato combines documentary-style prose narratives with the passionate lyric poetry for which Rees-Jones is renowned. Here as she experiments with form, particularly the sonnet, Rees-Jones questions the value of the poet and poetry itself. What is the difference, asks one poem, between a sigh and a song? Erato's themes are manifold but focus especially on personal loss, desire and recovery, in the context of a world in which wars and displacement of people has become a terrifying norm.
In its narrative of transformations, the invocation of Erato also carries with it a sense of errata and erasure. As stories and ideas are repeated, and recurring imagery – of fires, bees, birds – is continually reframed, we are asked to replay, rethink, rename. How do we step out from the 'perpetual loop' of trauma? And how do we process painful change? Bewilderment by ongoing historical tragedy is countered by the Rees-Jones's close attention to immediate or remembered experience, and the importance of the body, whether lying awake with a sleepless child, felling a backyard tree, walking the encampments of refugees in Paris, or the dreamlike conversation she has with the radio about bombs and drones.
Erato includes elegies for family members and close friends, including an impressive and moving long poem 'I.M.', and the autobiographical 'Caprice' in which Rees-Jones explores with musical abandon 'the scribble-mess' of self, and the 'grainy, atomized emotion coursing through in middle age'.
- GenresPoetry
77 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 30, 2019
68 people want to read
About the author
Deryn Rees-Jones
23 books7 followersRees-Jones is an Anglo-Welsh poet and professor of poetry at the University of Liverpool. She has a PhD from Birkbeck where she studied women poets. She has published four volumes of poetry. 'Burying the Wren' was a TLS Book of the Year and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 30, 2021
3.5⭐️
February 10, 2020
"Something I knew was only beginning.
Something, I knew, was at an end."
I have read a lot of poetry in the last couple of years. This is up amongst the best of them. This collection takes its title from Erato, the Muse of Lyric poetry. It beautifully covers and questions the world we live in. It uses language with subtlety and strength to talk about big subjects: nature, love, death, grief, fear, terrorism, remembering and forgetting.
"And now when I walk with my son and daughter down the street
it is with you and their lost father and the future and the notes of the
piano not played and the length of stride as the sun creates shadow
and the small pieces of LEGO in my pocket like the fragments of a dead
language just translated."
I liked pretty much every poem here but I had a particular soft spot for Mon Amour, Lyrebird, Siren, Walk, Lapse, I.M., Erasure, Heartbreak, and Nightjar.
I've said in pretty much every poetry review I've put up on Goodreads that I lack the technical knowledge to analyse the engineering of these poems, but I know when something moves me. And these poems moved me to both thought and emotion. What more do you want from poetry?
"...Under the line in caps lock I write: A poem
teaches us what we don't yet know."
Something, I knew, was at an end."
I have read a lot of poetry in the last couple of years. This is up amongst the best of them. This collection takes its title from Erato, the Muse of Lyric poetry. It beautifully covers and questions the world we live in. It uses language with subtlety and strength to talk about big subjects: nature, love, death, grief, fear, terrorism, remembering and forgetting.
"And now when I walk with my son and daughter down the street
it is with you and their lost father and the future and the notes of the
piano not played and the length of stride as the sun creates shadow
and the small pieces of LEGO in my pocket like the fragments of a dead
language just translated."
I liked pretty much every poem here but I had a particular soft spot for Mon Amour, Lyrebird, Siren, Walk, Lapse, I.M., Erasure, Heartbreak, and Nightjar.
I've said in pretty much every poetry review I've put up on Goodreads that I lack the technical knowledge to analyse the engineering of these poems, but I know when something moves me. And these poems moved me to both thought and emotion. What more do you want from poetry?
"...Under the line in caps lock I write: A poem
teaches us what we don't yet know."
December 30, 2022
A solid collection that follows a lot of the standard poetic themes: love, grief, change.
What is most present is its realness in the sense of its kinship to clarity and not shying away from allowing a little to go unsaid. Because that's perfectly reasonable for humans, that element of unspoken recognition. A familiarity that needs no translation.
To that end I was rather touched by quite a few poems.
Siren, Lapse and Fires were my top poems here and I read each many times.
Definitely a collection I'll return to.
Was a tiny bit disappointed at the length of the collection. Felt a little light.
What is most present is its realness in the sense of its kinship to clarity and not shying away from allowing a little to go unsaid. Because that's perfectly reasonable for humans, that element of unspoken recognition. A familiarity that needs no translation.
To that end I was rather touched by quite a few poems.
Siren, Lapse and Fires were my top poems here and I read each many times.
Definitely a collection I'll return to.
Was a tiny bit disappointed at the length of the collection. Felt a little light.
July 27, 2019
A brilliant, moving and intelligent portrayal of loss and how we deal with it. I borrowed this book from a friend and will have to buy my own copy as I know I will want to read it again.
February 18, 2020
Such a rich, thoughtfully put together collection - the poems often seem to exist in their own important, slightly magic world
August 1, 2025
Four and a half Stars
This is an innovative and moving set of poems. Rees -Jones is particularly strong on the themes of loss, grief and love.
This is an innovative and moving set of poems. Rees -Jones is particularly strong on the themes of loss, grief and love.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews